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'I woke up underneath my car' | Crandall woman describes struggle with car thieves

Misty Waddle said her encounter with early-morning thieves left her unconscious. 'I saw the car above my face. I thought I was dreaming.'

CRANDALL, Texas — Misty Waddle remembers vividly the moment she walked up to her car one early morning several weeks ago. 

The back door of her SUV was wide open, and she thought it was her son going through her car in the driveway. 

She'd soon come to realize it was a complete stranger rummaging through her stuff.

"The kid's face was - is - engraved in my brain, that's what I see all the time," Waddle said.

Waddle was a victim of what police called a growing trend in North Texas of late-night and early-morning car burglaries. Crandall police told WFAA on that particular morning, nine homes in the same neighborhood were hit.

"All the cars, all the vehicles were unlocked at the time," said Crandall Police Chief Forrest Frierson.

The Collin County Sheriff's Office and the Joint East Texas Fugitive Task Force arrested Devin Zimmerman and Kassidy Weaver on burglary charges.

Waddle told WFAA that Zimmerman was inside her car and he was holding her Louis Vuitton purse. She jumped into action.

"I grabbed my purse, punched him in the face, and then I slapped him and grabbed him and kneed him, and that was it. That's all I remember," she recalled.

Waddle said she does not remember what happened next. She told WFAA that she was left unconscious but does not know for how long. When she opened her eyes, she was underneath her SUV.

"I saw the car above my face. I thought I was dreaming," she described. "I didn't even know I could fit underneath there."

Waddle said her eyes were blurry and she felt dizzy, achy and very nauseous. By the time she had awakened, she said no one was around. But multiple videos have now emerged in which Zimmerman is shown lifting handles on cars in the neighborhood, police said.

"We received an anonymous tip that got kind of got us onto the suspect, and somebody recognized him in the video," Frierson explained.

Chief Frierson told WFAA that the majority of the items taken that night have been returned to owners since the arrest.

Waddle said she just wishes her cameras had caught the brief struggle, because it may help explain things. Her bruises have healed. The concussion took a full week to recover from. But, for the first couple weeks after, her husband escorted her to the car in the morning.

"You can't live your life worried about what's going to happen next," she said.

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